Alone in the Universe
by Flywheel Shyster and Flywheel
Summary: In the darkness of the night, two unlikely people come together to discuss life, the universe and everything. (HS: Part 1)


The summer night was still. Trees threw long shadows in the light of lampposts, the grass swaying in the minuscule breeze, not yet cut by people loafing, and the dark sky draped firmly over small pinpoints of interstellar shines. A peaceful calm had lulled the small community Peach Creek into a safe, snug embrace. Not even the unofficial pit stain of this rural area, Rethink Avenue, dared pipe up and disturb this restful state, as it so often did due to the antics of the children residing there. The time could have something to do with it; rarely did anyone venture outside past eleven and, as a creaky chain began to ring out, it was way past that unspoken curfew.

Sandal clad feet dangled freely, flicking sand every now and then when he willed them to point downwards. He could have sworn that it hadn't been too long ago since he couldn't even reach the ground sitting on the swing. All part of growing up, he supposed. Perhaps he could even be considered too old to be swinging. No, not at this time, no child would go out this late simply to swing. Ergo, this was cool, even more so if he claimed he was doing it ironically. No child would even be up this late, if not simply to disobey its parents or to watch the local firework display on New Year's Eve. He was no child. No more.

It had been laid out in front of him that he wasn't. Or, as his father always said when quoting Walt Disney, "adults are only kids grown up, anyway". But that thought was impossible. Not even turned thirteen and he was expected just to cast off the masks he had been wearing all of his life in an instant? To take to the stage on opening night, not even having so much as glanced at the script beforehand, stuttering nervously in the heat of the stage lights? No, that was just silly. It had been his first retort to the whole situation though; that they were forcing him to grow up all at once. So was not the case, they had insisted. Parts of him still felt contradictory.

After that day's session though, realization had begun to creep over him. What he had been doing for so long, what effects could be seen on his health, personal as well as social, and foremost that Plank was, quite simply, just an old plank.

The chains rattled as he reached peak altitude, an empty thrill of adrenaline surging through the pit of his stomach as he plummeted back down. Plank. His companion since the days of old. Since way before the Edventures, before frolicking with the other kids, before anyone else had moved to the recently finished phase one houses of the Peach Creek Estates. Jonny, his mother and father; the first settlers.

Jonny had found a board one day, abandoned by construction workers at the edge of the construction site for the second phase homes, while out on a stroll with his parents and had taken quite a liking to it. Why a toddler would do so is anyone's guess, but that was the way the story went. Two eyes and a mouth, drawn on with one blue and one red crayon, and he had a friend. His parents thought nothing more of it, as friends of theirs had children who had similar bonds to teddy bears and other stuffed animals. It was, however, when other child rearing families began to tumble onto the street that something became rather evident: Jonny had no real interest in playing with the other kids. To begin with. The mistake always made was trying to separate him from the board, to which he responded with non-stop crying and sulking until he was allowed to go home and reunite with his wooden companion again. Therefore, wherever Jonny went, the board went too.

Somewhere along the way, long after his parents began to think along the same lines, he started to question his relationship to the piece of wood. Was it possible that he kept Plank around simply as an excuse? To be able to blame his bad behavior, his ill deeds and naughty thoughts, on this inanimate object? He did notice more and more than whenever Plank 'spoke', he was only projecting thoughts that he himself didn't dare to act upon, not alone at least. Of course Plank couldn't speak. Wood did not a living friend make. A companion, yes, but not something with which he could actually have real conversations.

But it had all felt so... Natural. As an only child, he was used to loneliness. He had himself in the beginning and he continued to feel comfortable with it through the years. Other people, other children, were so different in so many ways. The way Ed never seemed to be mentally present, Double-D's thesaurus like mouth, Kevin's laid back, nonchalant demeanor and Eddy's arrogant swagger as he walked down the street, thinking of scams. Rather than try to understand it, he dodged it all together and continued to be just he and himself. Even when he spent time with the other kids, it was still only because he could carry around Plank with him. Whether the others understood and accepted it or just kept him around for giggles didn't matter.

As the street grew however, with new additions to the populace, he felt a slight shift in his social needs. Seeing Kevin and Rolf mess around with a basketball or Jimmy and Sarah play pretend in a front yard produced a longing within him. For someone else to be there, for a conversation where he didn't know the answer before he had even asked the question, to have someone be there for him as he would for them.

It was scary though, mindbogglingly so. As the therapist had stated previously, even pardoning the pun, Jonny's whole shtick with Plank could, if carried on into adulthood, border dangerously close to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Multiple personalities in layman's terms. He could see how; without Plank, he could barely collect his whole self to speak freely. Constantly proofing, constantly censoring, every little thing he said. Was it him? Or was it the side of him he released through Plank? Would those things even be something acceptable to say? Or should he continue to be this half finished version of himself? It all tore at his psyche to the degree where he went home directly after school one day spent without Plank and fell asleep out of sheer physical exhaustion. It would be good for him to get through it, somewhere inside his head he knew that. But it was all so strenuous that he didn't really care in the end: He needed the board to function properly. He needed it to speak.

Or, at least, he _had_ needed it, they had told him. He could accomplish a successful social life without carrying around lumber. So it had come that Jonny was positioned out on the swing in the middle of the night, for the fourth time that week. To collect himself back into a complete individual. To take back the voice Plank stole so long ago and had possessed since then.

* * *

The summer night was warm, even though the wind grew and shrank in its efforts to rustle the trees. One could imagine this is how it would be to sit inside a lung. That would be quite the experience. To snuggle up inside an alveolus and watch the air majestically rush past, knowing that it would carry on and feed the whole system the very oxygen it needed to keep going. Perhaps that's what this was; her sitting on the lakeside, watching the wind rustle the trees across the small body of water, was observing while the world breathed. That in itself was quite an experience.

She found herself doing this more and more often. Just heading out, strolling around, sitting whenever she felt like it, and just thinking about things. Nothing in particular, just whatever came to mind. Sometimes it was great thoughts about the world as a whole, sometimes it was about herself and her sisters as individuals and sometimes it was about a certain yellow-skinned boy she fancied. Nothing was off limits.

When thinking about the world, she usually thought of its beauty and the gifts it bore to mankind, not the horrid acts of corrupt humans and atrocious effects their very presence had on the planet. That could easily sadden her to a degree where she wished for her mother to hold her tightly and reassure her that everything would be alright in the end. So she didn't. Instead, she thought back to the days when the family's trailer had been mobile and had been lugged around the country by her father's car. The towns they had passed through, the deserts they had crossed, the forests they had encountered. It was all so foreign, yet incredibly exciting. The stories each of those places could tell, had they possessed mouths.

The men and women who would work in the city by day and return home to their children and two story houses by night, gathering around to eat dinner at an IKEA table before sitting down in front of the television to watch a game show on cable. The creatures that inhabited the deserts, scurrying along in their hunt for nourishment, basking in the harsh, unrelenting sunshine until the cool shade of the night offered them some soothing comfort. The animals of the forests, families of their own, living their lives day by day, whose only goal was survival. Funny enough, all three examples could be used as a parable for her own family.

Her mother relentlessly working overtime to afford their standard of living, though still sub-standard to the norm, oft not returning home until after the three sisters had gone to sleep and equally oft having departed before they awoke the next morning. The situation had always been as such which is why it seemed natural to only set the dinner table for three. Depending on what mood her oldest sister Lee was in, for it was she who had taken a matriarchal role in the absence of their mother, they would either remain at the table and conduct the evening meal in a civilized manner or grab whatever food they had made and devour it in front of the television. It usually came down to whatever happened to be on. Whichever way they did it, they always made sure that all the household chores were completed in due time before they went to bed. To ease up the burden on their old Ma'.

This, in turn, is what led to the survival part; the three having had to continue on raising themselves. Taking care of each other, seeing to each others' needs, teaching the others when fit. Or, well, only Lee did the last part. It was only May herself who actually made it a rule to follow Lee's will to the letter while her other sister, Marie, had made it a rule to be a thorn in Lee's side wherever _she_ saw fit. Could be some Alpha-Beta dominance struggle going on. Probably, she wouldn't really know; always considered the runt of the litter.

They were coming into a different age all together though. May had been itching for something more for a while now; a stronger sense of individuality, a desire to become something more than one of the nefarious Kanker sisters. She didn't really see herself as nefarious anyway. The whole business with her and her sisters' crushes on those three odd boys in the nearby Cul-de-Sac? All Lee's and Marie's initiative from the beginning. That's not to say that she didn't soon fall for the gentle giant she had been paired with, but she also grew to question the way they went about to show their affections for the three Eds. Their mother had always been clear on the point that men shouldn't be dealt with a gentle hand, having been scorched for doing so in the past, but May wondered if that really applied to herself. She was only twelve after all; could one boy really ruin her whole life there and then? Unlikely, she hoped.

She had no idea how to convey this to the subject of her affection in a serous manner though. Showing the boy how much she liked him had always been sort of fun, but she wondered how it would feel if her feelings were to be reciprocated. Instead, he just ran whenever someone even mentioned the month succeeding April and maybe it would always be so. Maybe she deserved it for what she'd put him through. But then again, she was just a kid. Still plenty of mistakes to make.

Deciding to let all of these serious matters sink back into whatever box she usually kept them in, she resumed thinking about things that made her happy. Mostly, she would just fantasize wildly about the most outlandish things she could imagine, simply because she could. Traversing the oceans on an old, sea-worn ship christened the Flying Jawbreaker as the feared Captain Je Hebt Kanker, sailing to far off exotic continents and meeting strange villagers unaware of Western civilization. Riding into great battles on a shining stallion, laying waste to countless of enemies before engaging and slaying the mighty dragon Cioncatun with her trustworthy sword Bucktooth. Walking down the red carpet as a multi-million drawing card in Hollywood, getting offered countless movie deals from left and right just by showing her face.

Anything could happen within her own mind and she absolutely loved it. There were no rules, no limits, and there was always the chance of a happy-ever-after-ending to the scenarios. Even if her sisters couldn't see fantasizing that way, and often scolded May when she did it excessively, she couldn't help but wish that life could be more like that. More swashbuckling flair, more astonishing romance, more awestriking adventures to tell the grandchildren about one day. Some day, maybe, those things would come more naturally, but until then, reality would sort of suck.

* * *

"Hello?" It was the eighth night since Jonny had promised his therapist to start leaving Plank at home and the young boy was yet again positioned on the swing, trying to get a grasp on himself, when a sudden rustle in some nearby bushes startled him. He didn't expect a response but called out nonetheless, probably just a deer or some similar forest animal lollygagging about.

"Hello?" May, on the other hand, hadn't even expected to hear another person from the other side of the bush, having temporarily lost her way while strolling through the small forest separating the Cul-de-Sac and trailer park to eventually come across the playground.

"Who's there?" Jonny didn't immediately recognize the voice, which worried him. He stopped the small momentum of the swing with his feet should he have to run for his life.

"May." The blonde girl had similar thoughts, not really sure how to approach the whole situation. She'd never really had any sort of connection with the kids living in the Cul-de-Sac, sans the Eds in a way, so Jonny's voice barely even registered as vaguely familiar.

" _May Kanker?!_ " His head spun around nervously, searching the area to see if he was about to be ambushed; it was almost impossible to encounter a lone Kanker sister, unless you were gonna be jumped and bullied for the sake of it.

"Yup."

"Where... Where are your sisters?"

"At home, sleeping."

"So... You're alone?"

"Yup." A brief silence. She was now convinced that this kid on the other side of the foliage lived in the Cul-de-Sac, but she had no idea which one. The jock? The wimp? Couldn't be the farmer, he spoke like a cross between that Google Translate and Yoda. "Who're you?"

"Jonny." He swallowed loudly, trying to compose himself and seem a lot less nervous than he actually was. Just because he had happened to stumble upon only one Kanker sister didn't it mean that he would walk away from this unscathed. Heck, May could even be lying and her sisters were just around the corner, waiting for a signal.

"Oh, yeah, with the plank?" The weird kid, that's the one. That didn't really answer the question of what he was doing out this late.

"Yeah. No, wait, no. Or- It's sorta weird right now." Not to mention how weird sitting on a swing and talking to one of the Cul-de-Sac's infamous predators standing on the other side of a shrubbery in the middle of the night was.

"Okay."

"What're you doing out this late?"

"Thinking. About stuff."

"What stuff?"

"You know, stuff. What it'd be like to fly." The kid, Jonny, seemed harmless enough to tell about the picture she'd painted in her head moments earlier; soaring over treetops, grazing the clouds and looking down upon the world snoozing down below.

"Like, in a plane?" Though he had done that once or twice in his life, and loved it, the sad truth was that he couldn't imagine that the Kanker sisters had ever traveled via airplane.

"No, fly like a bird flies."

"Oh. Yeah, that'd be kinda cool." A memory where he had once built an airplane with Plank sneaked up on him, but he quickly discarded it. "Hey, you ever think about how a bird can fly but a fly can't bird?"

"What?" May frowned.

"A bird can fly, right?"

"Yeah."

"But a fly can't bird. Isn't that kinda weird?"

"Oh." It dawned on her that it was a play on words and she chortled under her breath. "Words are kinda weird sometimes."

"Too true, sister." Only once it had slipped out did Jonny realize that he might actually enjoy talking to her, even though they still couldn't see each other.

"What're you doing out?" May considered moving out from behind the bush, but feared that it would frighten the boy and make him run away, as many did when laying eyes upon the Kankers.

"It's... Weird." Unsure whether or not he was ready to share his story, Jonny bit his lip and looked up at the sky to distract himself.

"What is?"

"Life."

"Yeah. Yeah, it can be that." Unbeknownst to either, May also took this moment to look up at the stars above where they twinkled against the dark canvas.

"Life and words are weird."

"Life and words..."

"Hey, you think we're alone?" Jonny suddenly kicked up some speed, swinging softly as he continued to gaze up at the firmament stretching out.

"I think so, there's only you and me around." She thought it was a rather peculiar question; she'd been out several times at that hour and this was the first time she'd met someone else.

"No, I mean, do you think we're alone in the universe?"

"Oh, like there're no aliens?"

"Yeah."

"Not really." May sat down with her back against the bush and hugged her knees, thinking about Jonny's question for a moment. "If what Ace taught us was true, then I think it's too big for us to be alone."

"Who's Ace?"

"My grandpa. He would point out the... Constellations he knew and talk about how mighty the universe is. So just because we don't know doesn't mean there aren't." The summers the Kanker family had spent at May's grandfather's house were some of the happiest days of her life, especially when they sat down on the porch after dinner; Ace would fire up his pipe, which he said he only smoked to look more 'grandfatherly', and tell them stories about things far and wide until it was time for bed. The otherwise rowdy sisters were always mesmerized by the man's tales, whether they concerned science and history or experiences from wars and countries on the other side of the world. They were simpler times, before Ace had to get himself an apartment in the city after a nasty fall down some stairs.

"Yeah, that's cool. My dad once said that even if the cosmos is huge, one small voice in the universe can make all the difference." It'd been Christmas a couple of years back and Jonny's family had driven to one his cousins for the annual family get-togethers where one of the kids had received a telescope. Jonny's dad had uttered those words, after which he had been slapped on the back by his brother who claimed he should ease up on the egg nog.

"I wanna think that's true." She hoped it was. If so, maybe she could make her thoughts and dreams reality. Maybe not the parts with the pirate ships and dragons, maybe not even her aspiration to become a movie star, but maybe she could make her life contain more swashbuckling, romantic adventures. If her voice mattered.

"Hey, May, wanna swing?" Jonny slowed down, looking expectantly over at the place her voice was coming from. He found it surprisingly easy to speak with May, more so than he could ever have imagined, and actually found himself wanting to talk more with her. He didn't even have to think over anything he said, if it was he himself or that other part of him that Plank had embodied who wanted to say it, and the words just seemed to flow freely out of him. Maybe they had all been right, maybe he could go on to have a social life without a piece of wood attached to his arm.

"Yeah!" May raised herself to her feet at his invitation, brushed off whatever dirt had assembled on the seat of her pants and rounded the bush, finally facing her conversational partner. If her voice would matter to him then perhaps reality wouldn't suck as much if they could swing side by side. Perhaps all they needed was only one true friend in the universe.


End file.
